Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time writing essays. – Karl Kraus, translated from German by Harry Zohn

To appreciate and use correctly a valuable maxim requires a genius, a vital appropriating exercise of mind, closely allied to that which first created it. – William Rounseville Alger, “The Utility and the Futility of Aphorisms,” The Atla

But I have long thought that if you knew a column of advertisements by heart, you could achieve unexpected felicities with them. You can get a happy quotation anywhere if you have the eye. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 1923, quoted in Holmes-Laski Letters: The Correspond

Seek not to know who said this or that, but take note of what has been said. – Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, translated from Latin